New 4K-Watt Quad-Laser Metal 3D Printer Takes Aim at Industry Giants
It's not just about power—a new uniform gas flow system and automated laser calibration in Additive Industries MetalFab 420K aim to deliver unrivaled part consistency.
In what the Dutch firm describes as a “step-change in quality, productivity and usability” for industrial metal additive manufacturing, Additive Industries launched its new four-laser system, the MetalFab 420K. The machine combines a large build volume, four high-power lasers, advanced automation, and a factory-ready powder loop all targeted at metal-AM users wanting to shift from prototyping to genuine production.
Certainly not the only multi-laser metal powder bed fusion machine around, let’s look at the MetalFab 420K in context compared to some industry leaders: EOS’ M 400-4, Nikon SLM Solutions’ SLM 500, Bright Laser Technologies’s S450, Renishaw RenAM 500Q, and Farsoon’s FS422M.
The MetalFab 420K has many of the in-demand industrial features, including full-field scanning (not just overlapping laser paths), integrated powder loop automation, and beam size flexibility.
The new airflow system in the MetalFab platform is engineered to deliver “highly uniform inert-gas flow” across a large build volume achieving less than 10% velocity variance via an optimized chamber design. This ensures more spatter removal from the powerful lasers and a stable melt-pool behavior. There’s also a built-in powder extraction (sieving and recycling) and a heated build platform (up to ~175 °C).
The company says new enhancements to how the machine operates, including a new filter design provides improved waste handling and reduced maintenance, and enhanced oxygen and humidity controls increase overall productivity and quality. Used in concert, the gas-flow uniformity, laser alignment, and beam size flexibility aim to reduce variation and increase consistency.
Additive Industries uniquely spells out an in-process, automated laser-to-laser alignment during the build with a ±50 µm tolerance. Competitors boast various calibration and verification workflows, but not this specific automated, closed-loop during-job claim.
There are metal LPBF machines with more lasers and bigger build volumes, but the MetalFab’s 420 × 420 × 400 mm capacity seems to hit the sweet spot for manufacturers and it is a unique combination of quad 1,000 W lasers and build volume.
The 420K comes in three version: the Single Core is the base unit; the Dual Core has multi-material and automated back to back printing; the Continuous Production version has automated production of up to 8 print jobs and build plates loaded and unloaded by a robot.
If the real‐world results match the specifications (for example, Additive Industries claims “theoretical build-rate improvements of >3× for AlSi10Mg” on the new platform), this system could represents a compelling new entry into the high-throughput metal AM segment.
Additive Industries has not released a base price.
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